Time to talk
by Evalyn A
Summary: Tu-T'pol: T'Pol realizes it is time to talk ...


He walked into Engineering, clearly distracted by something, the current failures in the distribution grid to the warp nacelle

Disclaimer: Not making a dime off of this, they belong to Paramount, they don't belong to me, although finally they're starting to act as if they did. If I were in it for the money, I'd have gotten a real job long ago.

Rating: T/T, PG. May be archived, just let me know.

Time to talk by Evalyn A

He walked into Engineering, distracted, the current failures in the distribution grid to the warp nacelles clearly worrying him, past me where I stood at the status monitors. He didn't acknowledge, or perhaps didn't notice, my presence. I should not have felt offended; I should not have felt anything. But recent events have changed me in so many ways … the Pa'naar syndrome, the encounter with Rajiin, the effects of the trellium-D … and the effects of the nightly neuropressure sessions … I realized that I had lost the capacity to control my feelings somewhere along the way. The best I could hope for was to maintain a veneer, a brittle shell of impassivity, that wavered and cracked with more and more frequency in recent days. I returned my concentration to the status board, willing myself to focus on the readouts, and to attempt to draw correlations between the intermittent, apparently random failures that were plaguing the warp systems.

xxxxx

She was standing at the status board, punching entries into the monitor. She didn't react as I walked past. Why should she? She was doing her job. She did what she had to do, without hesitation, when the well-being of the ship was at stake. Hell, she'd given up her position in the Science Directorate, probably more than that, to be with us here. So when Dr. Phlox asked her to help a crewmate who could benefit from her unique abilities with neuropressure, she agreed to that, too, even though it was probably one of the most demeaning tasks she'd yet been asked to perform for the sake of humanity.

To spend her evening quiet time with a recalcitrant, irritable, ripe-smelling Chief Engineer was probably pretty much at the bottom of her list, in fact, but she continued to do it without complaint as long as I, too, acquiesced. The only time she got testy was when I tried to downplay my insomnia and the resulting need for her intervention, and she was right, of course. She usually was when it came to tangibles such as measuring crew performance.

My mind, wandering as it had too much of late, remembered a conversation at the Captain's table in which she suggested that trip to Risa in an attempt to improve the crew's performance … and her response regarding Vulcan mating frequency when asked about whether she'd been "relieving her tensions" in the way humans favoured the most.

So if that was Vulcan mating, what, then, did she mean by a "relationship", as she had used the term in her quarters? Surely she'd meant nothing, she had simply been defusing my objections to the repeated intimacy of the neuropressure sessions in her quarters, making them none of the crew's concern. And successfully so – lately she pretty much had me wrapped around her delicate greenish little finger.

So, I ignored her presence at the status board because I was not in the mood to deal with her, to find myself testing our relationship in the way one pokes at a sore tooth. You know that it will hurt but have to do it again in the hopes that something will have changed. Seven years? I frowned and climbed the ladder to the upper catwalk.

xxxxx

After two hours of monitoring the energy flows, with no pattern in the anomalies appearing to me, I realized that my efficiency had dropped by at least 15 since I had started. I paused to ascertain the reasons – my neck was aching and my blood glucose level was clearly lower than optimum. "Lt. Hess, please take over for me temporarily. I will return within 30 minutes." She nodded and I turned to leave.

Unable to stop myself, I glanced once around me. For a moment, a blond head caused me to pause, but it was not his. Remonstrating myself for this momentary weakness, I left Engineering.

When I arrived at the mess, it was quiet, the lights dimmed due to the lateness of the hour. I walked to the cabinet and perused the selection of late-night snacks that Chef had prepared. Nothing seemed particularly appropriate, until my eye fell on a slice of _lengtong_ pie, made from a native fruit we had acquired a few weeks ago on a trading stop. It reminded me of peaches.

I knew only too well why I found myself removing the pie from the shelf and returning to the table with it. After filling my cup with a light floral tea, I sat and allowed myself to savour the tangy soft sweetness of the fruit, contrasting against the crunchy crust. When had I become such a slave to sensation? I wondered. And when had I stopped caring?

I recalled my experience the week before – pacing the bridge as we awaited word from the shuttlepod containing the Captain and Mr. Tucker, long after they should have returned from investigating the sphere that we believed to be creating the spatial anomalies. Pacing had been the only way to hold within me the anxiety, the escalating fear, that he was not coming back; I should have been ashamed of that weakness, and even more ashamed of the wash of relief and the giddy feeling in my stomach when I heard the Captain's voice and knew then that I would hear his again, soon enough.

We should have had a neuropressure session tonight but I had known without asking that he would be working through the night. It was I who would have benefited more from the feel of his body beneath my fingers, I realized, and perhaps the feel of his hands on mine – I rubbed my neck and wondered for the thousandth time why I was here on Enterprise and not safe and secure in a predictable existence on Vulcan, far away from these maddening, incomprehensible, frustrating –

"Tired?" I heard a voice say behind me. Still with enough self-control left not to show how my heart raced, I turned and looked at him levelly.

"It has been a long day," I temporized, unwilling to admit any weakness, but noting to myself that in fact I must be tired indeed not to have heard him enter.

He pulled out a chair and sat, leaning his forehead on his hand. He did not ask for permission to sit as he once might have. Unconsciously, he took my willingness to accept his companionship for granted. I took in the weariness in his pose while still marvelling at how his appearance, exhausted as it was, shook me to the core.

xxxxx

"Chef has prepared a _lengtong _pie," she stated, "of acceptable quality. Would you care to try it?"

I looked up to see a morsel of pie hovering about 5 centimetres from my mouth. "Sure, uh, thanks," I replied about as suavely as a lamppost, and reached out to take the fork from her. But instead of letting go, she held on to the fork and I guided the mouthful in with my hand touching hers. My heart pounded as she gently extracted her hand from mine and ate another mouthful using the same fork that had just been in my mouth.

My thoughts were heading in a direction that was seriously inappropriate for the setting. "So, uh, did you come to any blinding realizations while studying the energy flows?" I asked, hoping to redirect my thoughts to a more professional arena. I thought her expression shifted slightly, unrecognizably, as she sipped her tea without replying. She put down the cup, and then said,

"Nothing of relevance to the warp instabilities."

I nodded, and got up to get myself a piece of the offending pie along with a glass of milk. As I stood at the dispenser, I suddenly realized that her answer had been somewhat deliberately ambiguous. I returned, trying to feign a casual interest in the conversation. I once again started to feel like I was going to have to get that tooth extracted for sure. "Anything of relevance to anything else?" I asked, deliberately looking at my pie as I speared a piece onto my fork.

"Perhaps," she replied, inscrutably.

"Such as?" I asked, starting to get testy at how she was making me work for every word.

She put down her fork and contemplated her plate for a long minute. "Mr. Tucker, I would be glad to continue this conversation with you, but perhaps it would be more appropriately held another time, when we are both not so … preoccupied," she finished somewhat uncertainly. "Now if you will excuse me, I must relieve Lt. Hess."

She stood and exited after carrying her dishes to the counter, leaving me even more frustrated than when I entered. I stabbed at my pie. Damn it, sooner or later there would have to be a time when there were no anomalies, no instabilities, no distractions … time to talk and find out the answers to the questions that were bouncing around my brain.

xxxxx

It was time to talk. I knew that and yet I had run, like a child, unwilling to deal with what had clearly turned into a "relationship" between Mr. Tucker and me without either one of us being fully aware of it. I had known the minute he returned to Engineering, had not missed him entering this time, and I felt the electricity of his gaze at my back.

I must deal with this, I thought, it is clearly impacting upon the performance of two of the senior crewmembers. It is, I told myself, simply a part of my duties as first officer. Beta shift was ending and I stood up from the console, turning to find him once again in my field of view, perusing a console in the far corner. I walked over to him and stated, quietly, "You have been on duty for 18 hours."

"So have you," he replied, but without the usual zip that in days past would have led to a discussion of superior Vulcan stamina permitting longer working hours.

I looked at him without expression, and simply said, "It is time."

"For?" he asked softly, looking at me with an expression that contained a mix of apprehension and hope, I thought.

"To talk," I replied. "Time to talk."

xxxxx

He put his hand to the small of my back as we entered my quarters and I felt a frisson run down my spine. Or perhaps, I thought, the talking could wait till another night.


End file.
